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 Once upon a time, Human Entertainment developer Goichi Suda decided to strike out on his own and founded Grasshopper Manufacture. There, he would not be working on someone else's projects, but his own ideas, like the Kill the Past games. The first of those, The Silver Case for the PS1 (1999), turned out to be an adventure game about solving some murders, i.e. what Japanese adventure games used to be about by default in their early years. It's got a few other old-school elements, but at least we'll be playing the translated and remastered version where language-dependent puzzles have been replaced by a button that solves puzzles automatically. The follow-up to TSC was Flower, Sun & Rain for the PS2 (2001), a fever dream taking the piss out of another trend in the late '80s Japanese gaming scene. This one also was not released in English originally, but got localised fairly soon, in the form of a Nintendo DS remake. The direct sequel to TSC, The 25th Ward originally came out as an online mobile phone game in Japan in 2005. Some years later t got discontinued, and vanished. We'll be playing the currently available remake, painstakingly pieced together from what little was left of the original assets. Somehow, it still has the '80s vibes about it. Suda sucks at killing the past.                                                                                                      
SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Feb 17, 2023 18:00
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| # ? May 5, 2024 01:46 |
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I'm greatly enjoying all the cool background info in episode -1, I love the game history fiction. EDIT: This game certainly has an interface. It looks a bit like piloting a tank while cops constantly yell at you. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 00:25
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Well I'm intrigued. Also, holy poo poo, thank god for the autosolver PurpleXVI posted:I'm greatly enjoying all the cool background info in episode -1, I love the game history fiction. Same! Although that reminds me, have there been any recent podcast episodes? I don't remember the last time I listened, not sure if I missed any. PurpleXVI posted:EDIT: This game certainly has an interface. It looks a bit like piloting a tank while cops constantly yell at you. The random words appearing and disappearing in the background are driving me crazy.
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Feb 18, 2023 02:28
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EasilyConfused posted:Although that reminds me, have there been any recent podcast episodes? I don't remember the last time I listened, not sure if I missed any.
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Feb 18, 2023 06:52
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Oh wow, I've got a lot to catch up on!
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Feb 18, 2023 14:06
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Each new episode comes out like clockwork on the 15th of the month, it's a highlight of my day.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:39
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NGDBSS posted:Each new episode comes out like clockwork on the 15th of the month, it's a highlight of my day. Somehow I only listened through episode 1.3. Maybe that's the last one Selenic actually linked in a thread? I'm subscribed now, dunno why I didn't do that before.
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Feb 19, 2023 02:46
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EasilyConfused posted:The random words appearing and disappearing in the background are driving me crazy. Is the point it's THE FUTURE (or an alternate present) and technofetishism has led to a world that makes the newscrawl on news channels look calm and relaxing by comparison? ...or did the creator just go nuts with any and all FX that could be splattered on the screen?
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Feb 19, 2023 20:47
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It's Big Dick time.
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Feb 24, 2023 17:05
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It's a Suda game, let's not make keeping track of the plot harder on ourselves than it already is. I vote placebo.
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Feb 25, 2023 02:37
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EasilyConfused posted:It's a Suda game, let's not make keeping track of the plot harder on ourselves than it already is. I vote placebo. yeah, agreed
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Feb 26, 2023 13:01
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...is the use of "Sliver" instead of "Silver" in the thread title intentional, or a typo? (also nth'ing the placebo bandwagon)
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Feb 26, 2023 13:37
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Zyxyz posted:...is the use of "Sliver" instead of "Silver" in the thread title intentional, or a typo? 
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Feb 26, 2023 15:08
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It's Resist or Sever all over again 
EasilyConfused fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Feb 26, 2023 |
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Feb 26, 2023 15:55
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This might be a hot take, but this game is fuckin' weird. I think I've forgotten everything about the first cases already.
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Mar 2, 2023 03:54
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I like the art switch, but the chapter feels like a mockery of a side story explaining the main one.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:04
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Well, we learned that the one guy at Babylon was a freelance reporter and that Kamui and Ayame have a weird fan club. Oh and I guess Ayame is pregnant with Kamui's child. Unless we already knew some of that and I forgot.
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Mar 4, 2023 02:04
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The uncredited Today's WORDs are actual Japanese sayings, though they're not translated directly, they've been replaced with the nearest English equivalent (at least, where one exists). The credited ones are from Western books, even in the Japanese version. The virgin/rabbit one is allegedly from Sun Tzu's Art of War so I guess they didn't want to mess with it too much but yeah I feel like they could do better. The website (syokutyusyokubutu) is literally Japanese for 'carnivorous plants', no pun interpretation necessary fortunately. The Bat is in reference to the chat guy's name (蝙蝠) though, they should have either explained that or ignored it (unless they can't I guess, might come up again later). Also the chat never reloads in the Japanese version, maybe a concession they had to make to get the English text to work. But yeah there were some more perspectives but not necessarily any actual new information of substance. On the other hand if it's a choice between doing placebo now and having to do an extended run of placebo chapters later, maybe it's not the worst choice.
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Mar 5, 2023 04:04
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With all sincerity I post the Krusty meme: https://youtu.be/Va5_rn3vG3A
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Mar 7, 2023 08:25
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Part 3 is coming whenever the hell it uploads.
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Mar 10, 2023 17:45
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The really faint lettering that isn't even near the dialogue text is the worst possible way to show who is talking. Also, are all the characters supposed to be unlikable?
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Mar 11, 2023 02:16
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EasilyConfused posted:Also, are all the characters supposed to be unlikable? 
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Mar 11, 2023 06:38
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SelenicMartian posted:The turtle was fine? Fair. I assume that it doesn't matter what you answer to the questions.
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Mar 11, 2023 16:25
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The background katakana looks like (mostly negative) stuff a child would say but it's not the questions from the opening or seemingly anything else directly connected to what's on-screen (since the same words continue throughout every scene). Probably Hikaru's ghost providing mood setting. eg "Stop it", "Let's play on the way home", "I hate everyone", "I'm tired", "Everyone sucks", "I'm sorry", "I'm already unfixable", "What is this place?", "I don't know anyone", "Don't run", "That's just a lie", "I'm fine", "It's my turn next" Columbone was indeed a Japanese reference originally, to Furuhata Ninzaburō except with the Furuhata switched to Imaizumi, which is the surname of the sidekick. Also the 'Blockbuster' video rental was Tsutaya.
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Mar 15, 2023 03:04
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Every detective story needs the perspective of a random guy the detective woke up one morning to ask about his neighbours by summoning lightning.
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Mar 17, 2023 15:30
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The "quoted names" for the kids early on are quoted in Japanese as well (in 「...」 quotes) but yeah they switch from hiragana to katakana there. Maybe just for clarity so you can recognise them better later. The 'pure and brutal' feelings, well, the nearest dictionary has several suggestions, ruthless would probably work better since brutal tends to suggest malice which is the opposite of Morishima's point.
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Mar 21, 2023 00:43
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Of all the things that have, lets say happened, in this game so far the quiz is probably the only thing I understood immediately. I would have failed misberably.
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Mar 21, 2023 05:50
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Explosions! Finally!
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Mar 24, 2023 15:06
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Wow that escalated fast at the end.
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Mar 26, 2023 17:09
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EasilyConfused posted:Wow that escalated fast at the end. I was starting to think you just meant the building about 3/4 of the way through the video but yeah, that was quite the conclusion.
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Mar 27, 2023 22:06
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I think, this is where Placebo starts getting good.
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Mar 31, 2023 15:37
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Yeah, that was a definite improvement content-wise. On the translation - although the riddles were the same, they did something odd here and I'm not really sure why. In the Japanese the wording between what was in the mail and what was in the book was, while not entirely identical, none of the actual words were changed, they didn't (eg) switch 'crazy' for 'crooked' at any point. I guess the English version wanted to be faithful to the actual book which is fair enough, but then why not transfer that back to the mail if so. "Pick up your axe and jump into the abyss" - firstly, 'abyss' should be 'deep water', these are the same kanji in this instance. Secondly the mail is unclear on this point but the phrase is used negatively, like 'This is like taking an axe into the water [as opposed to a forest]' (ie, you are doing the wrong thing). I mentioned they were previously using the nearest English equivalents for these where possible and I don't know why they didn't just put 'Use the right tool for the job' here.
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Apr 4, 2023 01:30
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Suda51 gets the Web. Shitposting is real. The Internet makes you stupid. 
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Apr 7, 2023 15:30
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Hmm, not much for our hero to do though the internet doesn't seem to really be his speciality anyway judging by previous cases, maybe big email fan Tokio can get something done. Apparently the Sayaka FMV was replaced by a version they remade for some reason for the PS4 and patched into the PC version shortly after (original version @35:00) The ungrammatical text in the chat conversations was mostly done in Japanese by splitting phrases with spaces instead of some connecting piece of grammar; Japanese generally doesn't use spaces mid-sentence except for deliberate emphasis or weirdness. Grimes* in particular used a lot of katakana for Japanese words which again is not normally a thing unless you're being deliberately weird. * Grimes was translated from Piiko, not really sure why because all the other names in that conversation were translated directly. Maybe some reference I'm not getting. The thing oldman searched the internet for, 殺す, is the verb 'to kill', hard to imagine there would only be 16 hits for this even if this is a specialised search engine for the 1999 dark web or whatever. Also, TSUKI is moon.
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Apr 10, 2023 18:47
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9/9/99??? This is all just an ARG for the release of the Dreamcast! It really looks like Kusabi and Sumio are having pillow talk in bed.
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Apr 14, 2023 00:55
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Placebo has decided to have its own plot now.
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Apr 14, 2023 15:20
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So we're going to follow Red next Placebo, right?
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Apr 16, 2023 01:52
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"They're just little tweets and twitters" is pretty interesting - although that's not the literal thing he said, what he did say is that they're mutterings (つぶやき), and that's a word that has been co-opted in Japanese in recent years to mean a Tweet. Translating it like that is some pretty generous localisation considering it only makes sense to do that 10+ years after the game was originally released, but, it's not entirely wrong. There's several 'twitter, huh?' comments on the Japanese video I'm looking at, even. I won't pretend I've read all or even most of the words in the game for comparison because there are a lot of words (particularly in Placebo) but as far as I can tell the localisation is generally pretty good, even for this case in particular they did a certain amount of reinterpretation of the chats (eg deliberately poor grammar as already mentioned, replacing the imperative of 'log out' with 'gently caress off' when Tokio was getting yelled at in the kamuinet chat) and it doesn't really feel out of place (not that I'm a late 90s Japanese chat board expert). Debatable whether Tokio needs to refer to people as mongoloids or whatever though, I guess they're trying to be gritty and real but hmm. But yeah even so the words of the day are mostly pretty low-effort - "a soft answer is a specific cure of anger" isn't even the literal translation of that phrase (it's 'if someone throws a rice bowl, catch it with cotton') but, if you google that translation you'll find a few Japanese (and, oddly, not Japanese) to English sites listing it as an existing translation so I presume they just picked that translation up from somewhere and reused it even though it's just not natural English at all.
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Apr 19, 2023 02:06
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I'm cutting Lifecut in half because it's reaching MGS2 levels on endgame reveals.
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Apr 21, 2023 15:24
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| # ? May 5, 2024 01:46 |
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SelenicMartian posted:I'm cutting Lifecut in half because it's reaching MGS2 levels on endgame reveals. Wow, that was a lot of plot. I don't understand why Tetsu shot the boss, but I'm not sure I'm supposed to. And the guy in the first video with the hair made me think of a Japanese Pippi Longstocking for some reason
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Apr 22, 2023 00:09
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